House Republicans’ vote to repeal health care reform next week will be symbolic. With a Democratic majority in the Senate and a president with a veto at the ready, wholesale repeal will not happen. It’s what follows the symbolic vote that could cause harm: gradual attempts to chip away at reform by, for example, refusing to fund provisions.

So if you support President Barack Obama’s reforms as a starting point for reshaping the American health care system, this is the time to speak up.

Maybe you’re relieved that, thanks to reform, you can provide coverage to your kids younger than 26 who can’t yet find a job with benefits. Or to know that the cancer you overcame last year won’t make you uninsurable in the future. Maybe you just believe that leaving 50 million Americans — 16.7 percent of the population — uninsured was, for a major industrialized nation, an inefficient way to deliver health care and simply wrong.

Or perhaps you’re more serious about reducing debt than the GOP leadership. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says repealing reform would add some $230 billion to the federal deficit in the next 10 years.

The voices of opponents of health care reform — and of anything else that might be a feather in Obama’s cap — are loud. We suspect there are more supporters, but that won’t matter if they remain silent.

Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to North Korea. He had been medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died at age 22.